Methodology

Over the years, scientists and policy-makers have used several methodologies to gain insights into the future and develop action-orienting conclusions according to a desired version of the future. When it comes to international scientific and technological cooperation policy, however, the approach of scenario building based foresight has shown to be rather successful³⁴. An exemplary effort in this direction can be seen in the SCOPE2015 foresight project, a foresight exercise conducted for the INCO department of the European Commission in cooperation with PREST/Manchester³⁵. Currently, several INCO-projects³⁶ or, for example, the International Council for Science (ICSU)³⁷ are using or planning to use

34 Scenario techniques are also used in thematically much broader foresight exercises as the recent European Commission (2009) report “The World in 2025. Rising Asia and Socio-Ecological Transition”

shows.

35 For the final report see: European Commission (2006): Scenarios for future scientific and technological developments in developing countries 2005-2015, EC DG Research: Brussels.

36 Next to SEA-EU-NET: EULAKS, New INDIGO and ERA-Net RUS to name but a few.

37 ICSU Foresight Analysis on the potential development of international science, online at:

http://www.icsu.org/1_icsuinscience/PDF/ICSU_F

scenario techniques for S&T cooperation relevant foresight exercises.

Scenarios are built up from collective visions of the future of a group of experts and should help decision-makers and other stakeholder groups to simplify “the avalanche of data into a limited number of possible states”³⁸. Scenario building efforts often start with the clarification of the setting, the identification and analysis of driving forces that will most probably directly affect the coming into being of different aspects of future developments and a subsequent importance ranking of the identified drivers as well as of uncertainties that might have become apparent. Then, the scenario logics are defined, scenarios fleshed out and their implications discussed³⁹. Thus, generic scenario building exercises comprise an exploratory elaboration of several futures that range from wanted developments to futures that are better avoided.

In addition to exploratory scenario building processes resulting in multiple scenarios, another approach is outlined in literature, namely the “success scenario” method⁴⁰. Therein, an effort is made to present an image of a desirable condition in form of one single scenario in order to help decision-makers reflect the current situation and identify crucial steps in view of a favourable future. A related scenario building exercise

oresight_summary.pdf, most recent access date: 3 March 2010.

38 Schoemaker, Paul J.H. (1995): Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking, in: Sloan Management Review, 36(2), p. 27.

39 ipts/Joint Research Center of the European Commission (2007): Online Foresight Guide.

Scenario Building, online at:

http://forlearn.jrc.ec.europa.eu/guide/3_scoping/me

can then be used by decision makers to streamline their approach to the topic in question. As Vincent-Lancrin has put it:

“Future scenarios do not aim to predict the future […] but merely aim to provide stakeholders with tools for thinking strategically about the uncertain future before them, which will be partly shaped by their actions and partly by factors beyond their control”⁴¹. This “singular scenario”

approach is also useful when it comes to structuring and guiding discussions so that underlying assumptions become clear and can be explicated⁴².

The SEA-EU-NET Foresight endeavour aims at involving science and technology policy-makers and other stakeholders in a dialogue reflecting upon the future of S&T cooperation between Europe and Southeast Asia. The project addresses Southeast Asia as a region and represents regional European S&T policy as well as a European Research Area – thus, the bi-regional perspective is inherently part of the project’s analysis focus. Nevertheless, bilateral S&T cooperation or constellations bringing together one region and single countries are also within its reach. Thus, we could anticipate that the regional-country dichotomy appears as an axis for our scenario logics, resulting in 4 possible base scenarios (region cooperation, region-country, country-region and country-country), three of which seem principally relevant⁴³.

41 Vincent-Lancrin, Stéphan (2009): What is Changing in Academic Research? Trends and Prospects, in:

OECD (ed.): Higher Education to 2030. Volume 2.

Globalisation, OECD: Paris, p. 173.

42 Miles, Ian / Green, Lawrence / Popper, Rafael (2004): FISTERA WP4 Futures Forum. D4.2 Scenario Methodology for Foresight in the European Research Area, European Communities: Brussels.

43 In case the experts emphasise the importance of the region EU – country SEA perspective, we will additionally take this into account in the forthcoming foresight workshops.

Going one step further in the anticipation of scenario logics, S&T cooperation intensity and the question of suitable cooperation instruments appear as an additional axis.

The Bogor foresight workshop offered the possibility to gather policy-makers and programme owners from different countries in both regions within a bi-regional event round one table. As resource constraints are always a pressing issue in high-level foresight processes, aiming not only at stakeholder participation, but also at creating commitment, it seemed feasible and suitable to focus in the beginning solely on the region-region perspective. While this is, as stated above, inherent to SEA-EU-NET’s design as a project, the idea that bi-regional cooperation should in principle serve both sides is equally at the core of the project’s work. In addition, preparations showed that the question of the feasibility and necessary framework conditions of a dense and intensive cooperation scenario between both regions raise the highest interest among stakeholders.

Consequently, we opted for an extended single success scenario method with a pre-defined “summer” scenario (based on desk research) applying an inward bound perspective⁴⁴. This means that we combined

44 Miles, Ian (2005), p. 169.

the scenario discussion with a backcasting⁴⁵ element looking at the driving and shaping factors⁴⁶ for the scenario starting from the desired future going backwards towards present times. This is also why the results of this scenario building effort can be translated into concrete policy recommendations.

Besides the advantage to capitalise as much as possible from the available resources in terms of participating experts, this scenario planning design, implemented in a highly interactive half-day workshop, also offered the possibility to evaluate the “desirability”

and “credibility” of the basic scenario which, according to Miles⁴⁷, are considered important elements of a success scenario.

The workshop design has proven a successful adaption of standard scenario methods for

- a setting involving high-level participants,

- facing time constraints,

- when discussing the viability and surrounding of a specific and possibly successful scenario⁴⁸ with the aim to sensitise for this possible future, create commitment for it and trigger a joint planning process.

The participants of the scenario workshop were the members of the SEA-EU-NET Steering Committee, as we assumed that the body (installed to have an overview on EU-SEA scientific relations to be able to steer the project) would also be the most suited one to take a look and think about future

45 Popper, Rafael (2008): Foresight Methodology, in:

Georghiou et al. (eds.): The Handbook of Technology Foresight. Concepts and Practice, Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, 54. deduced from the reactions of the experts.

regional cooperation. Concretely, 16 experts from policy-making and programme-owner institutions actively participated in the scenario workshop, 7 of them speaking for following basic “summer” success scenario:

We asked the participants of the workshop to project themselves 10 years into the future and to “be inside” a scenario where regional scientific cooperation between Europe and Southeast Asia has come to be very active, very successful and intense.

Then we asked the participants to identify brainstorming character of this session, we applied a rather broad definition of

“drivers”. Sticking to a stricter definition would imply to correct the flow of ideas which could then even stop the creative process – this was to be avoided.

Basic scenario: In the year 2020 the cooperation in S&T between the EU and ASEAN had reached a level of importance that some years before was hardly to be expected. Major development was the raise of ASEAN as a regional power, as the countries in the region decided to put importance to and budget into this umbrella organisation. In this way, ASEAN could initiate symmetric cooperation partnerships with the other major global players, the EU, the USA, and major S&T powers Consisting also of countries that differ quite a lot in their economic development, the European Union was considered an important cooperation partner, and with dedicated programmes including joint programming and funding from both sides, the cooperation in the area of S&T grew ever more intense.

The drivers were structured along 5 policy areas⁴⁹:

• Higher Education Policy,

• Science and Research Policy

• Industry, Trade and Economic Policy

• Development Policy, Global Challenges,

• Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, Security Policy

In a second stage of the workshop we asked the experts to take a regional view depending on their origin, and to rate the importance of the drivers using a grade-like rating in relation to either Europe or Southeast Asia (after re-coding for visualisation reasons: 5 points express highest importance and 1 least relevance). It is important to point out that not all experts had to rate the drivers. The number of experts assigning grades to the drivers, thus, is an additional measure for the perceived prominence of this driver (in addition to the average grade, for sure). Chapter 2 will analyse the outcomes of this exercise.

Then the experts were asked to identify, which factors would most likely be the most important shaping factors for the scenario, which had come into being. Box 2 shows the collection of shapers. In a second step the experts were asked to comment the proposed shapers (which are basically names without descriptions), so that everybody would know what is meant by a particular shaping factor. And then, thirdly, the experts were asked to once again rate the

49 Based on a compilation of policy areas from a presentation by Callum Searle, DG RTD D2 International Co-operation, Forward Looking Activities and International S&T Co-operation, 2 June 2009

importance of the shapers in relation to their region by awarding “points”. Here, no grades from 1-5 were asked, but each participant had a maximum of 10 points to assign to all mentioned shapers. The experts were also invited to comment on the presented drivers. Chapter 3 deals with the outcomes of this shaper identification, rating and commenting session and Annex 3 presents the full data gathered.

Finally, it is important to highlight that in both parts of the exercise, participants were invited to consider and grade⁵⁰ a number of pre-given, indicatory drivers and shapers (given to orient and stimulate the discussion), but then to go beyond that and add other drivers and shapers they consider important. Experts have made extensive use of this possibility – see Annexes 3 for a complete listing of pre-given and added drivers and shapers (and the comments regarding the shapers).

3.3 Drivers for SEA-EU S&T